Microbial Endolithic Community at Meteor Crater

Postimpact recovery and evolution in response to climate changes produced a modern ecosystem at Meteor Crater dominated by a grassland and woodland of piñon and juniper, which has been used to evaluate floral and megafaunal consequences of impact cratering during the Phanerozoic Eon of complex life. Here, we describe a postimpact endolithic community that illustrates a potential habitat for micro‐ecosystems around impact craters in both Proterozoic and Phanerozoic times. Phototrophs within impact‐ejected carbonate are dominated by eukaryotic green algae that affiliate with Trebouxiophycaea ( Trebouxia and Stichococcus spp.). Eukaryotic fungi are dominated by Ascomycota, including Hydropisphaera , Trichoderma , Acremonium , and Stanjemonium spp., and representatives of Basidiomycota including Agaricomycetes and Clitopilus spp. The prokaryotic community is dominated by Actinobacteria and Proteobacteria, the latter dominated by Alphaproteobacteria. At a genus level, the bacterial community contains typical representatives of soil and rock environments, including Promicromonospora , Lentzea , Streptomyces , Kribella , Rubrobacter , Deinococcus , Sphingomonas , Belnapia , and Methylobacterium spp. These data show that impact crater rocks host taxonomically diverse communities potentially involved in carbon cycling in the early stages of colonization.